Note from the author:
I wanted to write something longer than usual, and I aimed for 15 - 20k words, so I could fit some plot into a story without breaking it into parts. Unfortunately, the scope grew faster than I could keep up with, so if some part of the story feel disconnected from the rest, or the ending feels abrupt, that's 100% my fault.
One day I will learn how to write short stories, but this day is yet to come.
Anyway, check the tags, and prepare for a long read.
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Adam sat at the canteen, fiddling with the protein paste tube with one hand while scrolling on his tablet with the other. Looking at the scheduled arrivals and departures of spaceships through the station's local terminal got tiresome after a few days, so he managed to convince one of the dock workers to grant him remote access for a small one-time fee. It wasn't anything major that he would get in trouble for. At most, he circumvented a subscription paywall, which he wasn't worried about too much; the administration had better things to do than hunt down students for lunch money.
Sadly, even if it made the whole ordeal less bothersome, it was still as boring, if not even more so, than when he first did it. Scroll through the list, open the details of the vessel, wait for it to load, and learn that either the economy class ticket price is several times higher than his monthly income or that they are not looking for new crewmembers, especially ones with little to no experience.
The series of tables was finally loaded, so he started searching for the keywords. Type, cargo; class, heavy freighter; medium-length runs with a constant gravity of zero point six G across all decks. A week ago, he wouldn't even have looked at it. But now? He opened a new direct comm request, pasted a pre-written message, attached his resume with a certificate he got from college, and hit 'send' with well-practiced efficiency.
Seconds later, he received an automated response. Without even fully reading the headline, he knew what it said. Sorry, we are not looking for new crew members, but we will keep your application in mind for future recruitment processes.
He swallowed some protein paste from the tube, mostly from boredom rather than hunger. It didn't even taste good. It was one of the cheaper brands, with a flavor additive that was more homeopathic than chemical. Even so, there were some upsides to it. First of all, it was cheap. Secondly, for some ships, it was necessary.
Once space travel hit the mainstream, ages ago, spaceship manufacturers began the race to the bottom who could make the cheapest, shittiest tin can that was still space-worthy. And they all came to the same conclusion: the limiting factor was humans, or more specifically, biological needs. Give an astronaut some food and water, and they will turn it into waste. So, not only do you need to figure out how to keep the food fresh and clean, but you also need to process said waste. Unless you want to haul ridiculous amounts of clean water on each trip, which is deceptively heavy.
And so, the protein paste was born. It contained everything your body needed and absolutely nothing it didn't. Suddenly, you didn't have to build expensive filtration systems, and at the same time, you could reduce the storage space for food from a whole room to a single barrel.
It was a huge logistical uplift, mainly for business trips, like hauling cargo, and the military, of course. Not to mention that once we discovered spacefaring alien species, it simplified a great deal the organization of pre-flight stockpiles.
Since then, a lot has changed: the paste got better, and there were even body mods readily available to make your body more suited to digesting it. Adam got his own done a few years back, shortly after leaving his home planet. He knew he would need to work shitty jobs, so it was a must-have. And now he was slurping on a grey fluid just in case he needed to catch a ride on a tanker at a moment's notice.
Even free-floating in deep space, where most of the light had to be artificial due to the distance to the nearest star, the whole station still had a set day-night cycle. The arrivals were coming around the clock, but most departures were scheduled until late afternoon, according to the station's time zone. This was his daily hunting season, looking for an urgent message to fill in for a sick crew member or one that ditched the job because of terrible hazard pay. At this point, he was a beggar, not a chooser.
He refreshed the page one last time before calling it a day. The same habit as with social media, after scrolling for hours, something new could have popped up since he started browsing. And to his surprise, something just did.
He clicked the details button, tapping his fingers on the table, waiting for the page to load. Deep-space research, exploration vessel, small crew of scientists, which seemed promising so far. He returned to the top and started reading again, this time paying more attention. It seemed that they would jump a significant fraction of a light year towards an uninhabited cluster, collect the data, and slowly burn towards the closest, but still not-so-near station. A few months at least for the whole flight. Constant gravity of zero point nine G across most of the decks, protein rations only, mandatory help with research and maintenance to the best of one's ability.
He didn't think twice before opening a new comm request. He even took a minute to check if there were no mistakes in the message he copied and pasted dozens of times. Then he hit send.
And didn't get a response. Not for the first seconds, not for the first minute, or the one after that. That was good, even if the break from the norm made him nervous. Automated denials were almost instant. The fact that his inbox was still not showing any new messages was a good sign.
He squeezed the protein tube, but nothing came out. He threw it into the nearby bin, barely missing the drone flying by. Then, he heard the ping of a new message. 'Didn't expect anyone to sign up. Meet me in the hangar if you want to join. I prefer face-to-face. Hurry up, we are taking off in an hour.'
He wasn't the one to be told twice.
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There were a lot of things to notice about the captain.
In no particular order, those were female, alien, red, and big. Big should probably have been the first one on the list. Adam was around the galactic average for a human male, 5 feet 9, according to the ancient human measurement system, which he learned to use as a party trick. As for the captain, his best guess was somewhere between seven and eight feet, but much closer to the latter. His head was at the level of hers, quite pronounced, chest, so his sense of scale wasn't working as he was used to.
That made sense since he mostly met humans on the station, and the occasional aliens he passed by were either regular-sized humanoids or creatures that should be measured in all three directions instead of just the height. Two-legged, two-armed people the size of the woman he was talking to were not something he had encountered before.
But aside from her size and red skin, she was surprisingly human-like. Dressed in a leather jacket and cargo pants, at first sight, she gave him the impression of someone who gets things done, instead of just ordering people around. She wore something of a headband or a shawl around her head, which covered most of her forehead. Combined with a tight bun that she had her white hair in, and the overall strong posture, he would bet all of his money that she once worked as a mechanic.
"So, have you ever been on a spaceship before? As a crew, not just a passenger," she asked, making him focus back on the conversation.
"Yes, but only as an apprentice. I mostly helped with ventilation systems. But here at the station, I've been working with hydraulics and general machinery, so I have some experience with that as well," he answered, trying to put himself in the best light possible.
"That's good," the captain nodded, "we could always use some help with those. Even if our mechanic prefers working alone, I'm sure she wouldn't mind some help from time to time. And what about that other thing you sent? Some kind of internship?"
"More of a college, finished classes on HVAC, propulsion and gravity systems, basic metallurgy and robotics," Adam listed out, "mostly theoretical stuff, but we had a few chances to practice on a small scale."
The red woman nodded her head, thinking for a second. "Have you ever worked with drones? Big ones, space capable, not those household ones."
"Once, after graduating. Fixed some guy's private recon drone. I think it was the Marsal brand. Got hit with something while in space, all I had to do was replace the servos and rewire two limbs because the connection to the motherboard got fried."
She nodded again, this time with a smile. It was still weird having to always look up just to meet someone's eyes.
"That's good enough for me," she said, pulling out her tablet, "but before you say that you are in..."
"I am, if you'll have me." Adam interrupted her, the prospect of getting off the station making him a bit too excited.
"This will be a long trip," she warned, "I'm talking months long."
"Great, that means more time for me to get good at whatever I'll be doing onboard."
The captain laughed under her breath and tapped a few times on her device. Adam got a ping on his. "I've sent you a document; sign it and send it back to me and the administration here. It will prove that you are now part of the crew. We leave in thirty minutes, so you'd better hurry if you have any personal things to grab. Also, speak to the dockmaster and ask him to run the supplies check for our ship again to make sure we are set up for one more onboard. I will wait for his confirmation before we take off. If they ask, tell them the captain Ivali sent you."
"Thank you so much!" Adam wasn't sure if he was supposed to shake her hand, so he bowed instead and took off running, "I will be back in twenty!"
------------|A|------------
Sebastian wasn't having a great day. It was the second time he was caught slacking off today, and now he had to fill in for a so-called friend, who finished early and left him to take care of the dock after hours.
The only upside was that the majority of vessels scheduled for today had already left or were about to do so in a short while. After that, he could go back to watching the new show that he found yesterday and already binged through seven episodes.
That was the plan until some young guy ran straight into his office. Looked to be around twenty-five, with short, brown hair. He remembered him, it was the same kid he sold access to the dock data some time ago. Good thing nobody noticed, or he would be in trouble.
"Hi, sorry to bother you," he was winded. Was he running through the docks for fun? "I was hired on this ship here, Neternill, I think it's called. The captain asked me to ask you to check the supplies for the ship." Now, he was typing something on his tablet. And did he just say to run a check for some ship? "Right, here is the signed document. Should I send it to you or the administration's public mail?"
Sebastian waited for a second, maybe hoping that the guy would just run off the same way he came in, but unfortunately, he waited for an answer instead.
